


MANY EYED ANGEL

by cyclical



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, Divine Horror - Freeform, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:35:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27337270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyclical/pseuds/cyclical
Summary: Kenma gets to his feet. Hinata turns his head a little on the grass, enough to see the corpses he lays with shoulder-to-shoulder, and Kenma's cyclopean wings against the cloudless sky.Sees them and thinks about their bodies in the biblical light.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kozume Kenma
Comments: 22
Kudos: 45





	MANY EYED ANGEL

**Author's Note:**

> **warnings:**  
>  \+ gore (heavy on the blood)  
> \+ cannibalism (of sorts)  
> \+ violence  
> \+ themes of divine horror

beating heart whole. The taste is fleshy and sweet. Hinata shivers, bites down against the bitter flavor. He’d flown the corpse out to the edge of the woods to make sure he could eat uninterrupted, so he picks at the body until there’s nothing left but bones, and then makes play with the gummy skeleton for a bit—rearranging the spine and hips and shoulders into the walls of a curving hall. Structurally unsound, and liable to topple against a hard wind, but amusing all the same.

Hinata’s wings rustle when he stands. He’s already licked his fingers clean, but looks down and realizes he’s got blood on his kimono.

He could go back into the city looking like this—he’s done so before, though to varying degrees of success—or he could sleep it off in that little cave of his just aways distant; he sniffs, undecided. 

Wind drags fingers through the forest. Hinata shakes the hair out of his eyes, unfurling his wings, all their shuddering mass. He tips his nose up as he leaps off the cliffside. It’s easy to catch the current with this little body; the wind buffets him up and up and up, his feathers a bruised multicolor against the bone white

moon. It is high night, but later in the season. Time is riper with sun. The summer is hot, and explains away Hinata’s feet: bare and muddy from the riverbank.

Tanabata in Kyoto is a riot of color and sound. He walks among the throng with his wings hanging loose. Hinata must look wild in the decent crowd—his yukata a pale shiver of blue—but most of their gazes slide over his face and the big wings of his spine. The pavement between stalls is packed with rivers of people; he slips through a group of students playing a game with goldfish, and heads towards the far end of the festival grounds.

It’s one of those dreams again: a little dark and a little sweet. But the veil for him has always been thin and prodding, and one misstep means fading entirely. So in truth, it scares him a little.

The bamboo stalks flutter and sway like flutes. Hinata puts patience on his hunger and lets drift his vision, dreaming himself into a set of big wings and glowing halo, and cupping his hands pink with warmth.

His teeth are pikes in his mouth. He must be getting close. Hinata’s head turns with every face that flits past. _Is it her?_ He wonders. Hinata can never tell like this, only is drawn through the dark like a moth towards light.

He blinks down from a branch onto a group of boys below, dango tack on their fingers, hair thrown into violent color. One of them tips his head back to the stars. His throat swallows with laughter. The skin of his chest, slipped through the blinds of his yukata, is flushed with sake and beer.

And at this angle, his face is

all eyes. Cat-golden, and sloped at the corners. Hair wound thick over his antlers. The claws of his left hand are stained with blood and little bits of gore. Hinata, frozen where he stands, can’t do much else but watch as the demon sucks two fingers into his mouth and watches him right back. He stares. A greater demon...here?

The boy’s shadow curves unnaturally long behind him. A pair of palatial wings stretch out and upwards in the darkness.

Hinata contemplates his next move. He is hungry—starving, really, for warmth—and there will be nothing left if he waits too long to feed. The demon can’t do anything to Hinata that hasn’t already been done, so he throws the rest of thought away and drops into a crouch, swift and low, and plunges his hands into the gore of the first body. 

The satisfaction is immediate. Hinata bends forward to sink his teeth into the chest, just beneath the collarbone. In one easy motion, opens the cavity of the chest and the belly and feels the entrails ribbon and unspool over his wrists. He smooths his fingers across the bitter liver, the slick plate of lung.

Hinata’s gone to kneeling in the grass, and looks up only when the boy sinks to a crouch across from him. Hinata stares, whole face cowed with innocent surprise, mouth full, half the stomach still in his hand, the skin colored pomegranate with blood.

A moment passes. Hinata startles at the touch of fingers to his wrist. Cool, even through all that blood. The demon lifts Hinata’s hand to his mouth and sucks the residual sweetness from his fingers.

“Here,” the demon says. His great antlers sway as he severs the arteries of the heart from beneath the lungs, his little hands cupped together, his claws sprayed with fresh color. Something fond plays at his mouth. His lips curl, his eyes curl. “For you, Shouyou.”

Hinata can’t tear his eyes away from the bones and horns and hair, the gold thread of his robes, all the layers and layers of it, folded one over the other like origami light.

“How do you know my name?” Hinata asks.

“We knew each other a long time ago.”

Hinata frowns. “Oh,” he says. His head twitches to one side, as if trying to shake something off. Looks up. They share air. “Who are you?”

The demon smiles.

_“Kozume Kenma?”_

Oikawa’s grip is white-knuckled around his staff. If his control had been lesser, he would’ve run Hinata ten times through with his _naginata_ by now. “And you still show your siblings no apology.”

Hinata tips his chin upwards. Stubborn, still. “To what repentance do I owe?”

Highly ranked as he is, Oikawa could never be ugly, but the lines around his mouth are bitterly folded, and the light off his halo so bright it blinds. Hinata fights the pain of it.

Oikawa snaps his fingers, and Kageyama appears by his shoulder. He lifts his eyes for a moment—brief, but enough for Hinata to see their welling insides, the soreness of his defeat—as Oikawa rips the cloth from his shoulders. Underneath, where his muscle and bone shift, Hinata sees his black touch across Kageyama’s skin. There: all ten fingertips, and the lines of his palm. The small ink of his teeth.

Angels do not have hearts, but they have something like it. An essence of their being. A purpose; their immortal soul. Kageyama is ranked nearly as high as most of their ancient siblings—it takes one good look at him to know his goodness, after all—and the sight of it sends Hinata reeling backwards, horrified.

“I do not know why it is Tobio has protected you this far,” Oikawa says. “But no more. Do you understand?”

Hinata feels himself sick with the truth of it: he does not know why either. All that rotting skin, and Kageyama hadn’t raised his voice in a single protest as he burned. Was made ugly for Shouyou.

They don’t paint the Angels like this.

Hinata’s voice is hoarse. Says: “I didn’t know—I didn’t—”

“Then you know now,” Oikawa says. “This is the price for coupling with a greater demon. And for following to his realm, where Angels do not walk.”

It is only a dream, Hinata knows, but even dreams of the divine are no kinder than their truer counterparts. 

“You burn your siblings and scorn our discipline,” every word strikes like a gavel. “It is high time we scorn you too.”

The loneliness comes upon him like a knife, but all he thinks is: _d_ _on’t cry for me, Tobio._ _Not your tears of gold. No, not your_

tears of gold. 

Kageyama avoids Hinata’s gaze, his starry eyes unable to settle on particulars. 

Tobio today is dressed no different than usual. He is redolent in deep blue, crowned with stars, his mouth a tight line of discomfort.

Kageyama finds words before Hinata does. “I came to,” he says, halting and unsure. He clutches something to his chest, precious as it is. “I came to give you this.”

It's not an easy gift to accept, but Hinata does so anyway. Angels aren't meant to love after all.

“Thank you,” he says, catching Kageyama’s eye. “Tobio, thank you. Really. I know I never...I haven’t always been good about it.”

Kageyama acquiesces with a nod. Hinata wonders if the bruises have healed; he still holds himself like his skin is too tight, and crucifixion has always been more cruel than kind, anyhow. A meadow of angles to his aching geometry. Kageyama was the only one who dared to care about him, though Hinata was never appropriately thankful for it, he knows. Not to the deserved measure.

“I remember it now,” Hinata says, watching as Kageyama’s mouth twists. He remembers it too. A sudden thought occurs to him. “You shouldn’t be here, Tobio. What if they find out?” Hinata’s breath quickens. “What if they catch you? They’ll—you'll be exiled too.”

Kageyama looks away. “They won’t catch me,” he says. His wings are silver and brilliant in their multitudes. Hinata notices that he came when Kenma wasn’t around. He can’t imagine what they would look like in competition with each other.

There's nothing else to say, so Kageyama turns to leave, his kimono rustling the floor. Hinata is good to him, maybe for the first time. He does not call him Tobio. He does not stand close, does not touch, does not ask for one last kiss. Kageyama never ends up saying it, but Hinata knows that this is the last time they'll be seeing each other.

When he crawls into the warm of Kenma’s bed, he opens Kageyama’s gift. The latches come undone with a touch. The hinges well-fashioned. His fingers slip twice when he pushes the lid open and back.

Kenma peers over his shoulder. “What is it?” he asks.

Hinata raises a hand to cover his aching eyes. Then tilts the box enough for Kenma to see. Dead gold, but precious all the same, is

his halo. Kenma reaches for it again.

Tonight, they are at bed in the mortal realm, shifting together in the breaking light, their mouths blended—all skin and bone. Skin and bone. Kenma’s horns curve upwards like great racks of antlers, laced with veins of red and black, robes slipping oceanlike off his shoulders. The skin beneath is flushed and chromed. Beautiful.

Hinata can’t help the way he reaches up with both hands to hover by Kenma's brows, wondering what it would be like if he pushed down a little harder, if he could spoon out his eyes himself and wear them like jewels. They reflect low gold in the candlelight.

Kenma turns his head to press his lips into the heel of Hinata’s palm. “What is it?” he asks. “See something you like?”

“Yes,” Hinata rasps. Kenma is, every piece of him, precious metal. It consumes him.

Kenma’s lips quirk up at one corner. His little claws splay against Hinata’s shoulder, over his ribs, everywhere at once. Hinata’s wings shudder against the bedsheets. Blood runs between them; Hinata’s halo glows and glows and glows. Such is the eye of knowledge. He will Fall for this, surely, but it’s difficult to care when all he knows is the tired life of wearing six wings and

no heart.

Hinata tries to make light of it. “Listen, it really isn’t so bad.”

But Kenma won’t look up. His claw presses deeper against the gaping maw of Hinata's chest, his ribs racked like a roasted lamb’s. Kenma reaches in with his hands cupped together, as if he means to scoop the hollowness out himself. Hinata knows better than anyone else that he's trying to save an intangible thing; Kenma would be better off trying to tie the sun to a string than to fix Hinata of his Fallenness.

If there is anything the Angels do well, it is this: the stripping.

“It’s alright,” Hinata tries again, but his voice comes out weak despite his best efforts. “I never even—I never had much in there to begin with.”

He tries to lever himself up to his elbows—wanting to kiss away the lines of anger that have begun to crease the sloe edges of Kenma’s mouth—but he can’t do it. He can’t do it.

“This why you eat?” Kenma asks. Hinata can’t tell if it’s anger or sadness that dampens the barrel of his voice. Two red lines stroke down his cheek, his bloody misery. “Because it’s empty inside?”

Hinata can’t see a point in lying. He nods.

Kenma's hands shake when he reaches for his cheek. His skin is blistering hot, but Hinata no longer knows pain, and he closes his eyes instead, surges into his warmth like a flower to the light.

Hinata dares, even as his throat closes around the admission: his shameful truth. "I’m always—Kenma, so—cold.”

Kenma is still for a moment, considering. Hinata watches as he gets to his feet. His head turns a little on the grass, enough to see the corpses he lays with shoulder-to-shoulder, and Kenma’s cyclopean wings against the cloudless sky. He comes back like the reaper, carrying organs, lowering himself to his knees before he begins to pack them wordlessly inside: the coiling river of the intestines, two branched kidneys, big lungs, the begging heart.

 _He loves me so bloody,_ Hinata thinks.

Kenma's touch is knowing. Knows him. Knows Hinata. And where they touch, the skin begins to knit back together.

“Here,” he murmurs then, sitting back on his heels. Kenma pulls at Hinata a little, just so that he can rest upright against the bodies. They kiss briefly in the dark, red and lovely. “I have something to show you.”

“What is it?” Hinata asks, genuinely curious, and watches as Kenma reaches into his robes and draws out a necklace. Light leaks out from between Kenma's closed claws, the memory of something divine.

Kenma nudges Hinata’s chin backwards. Opens his mouth, covers it with his golden hand. Hinata lets him, despite the lack of an answer. There’s blood that hasn’t yet dried on his palm, and when the remnants of Hinata’s halo slides past his tongue and down his throat, Kenma smears color all over his cheek. Makes a mess of their shared devotion.

Hinata can’t speak around the fullness for a while. He lies there and gapes, hands fluttering like birds against his chest.

“I saved it. Whatever was left of your halo,” Kenma says into the sudden silence. He watches Hinata—softly, almost. “I don’t know if it is enough.”

"It is, if it's you," Hinata says, glowing from the inside out like a star, the two of them bathed together in

his biblical light, staining Hinata's hands human and sticky-warm in a honeycomb nightmare. The juice of the navel, the tender of the throat. He's crouched in the purple grass of night, feeding. Dirt and blood perfumes his nose. One hand reaches towards the skull. Feels its way through the thorns and antlers.

“Oh,” Hinata says, eyes flicking low. “I didn’t know you were still alive.”

Kenma’s face is hardly but a silver gash, but he is unconcerned. “You were busy,” he says sleepily. It takes considerable effort to kill a greater demon.

Hinata reaches out to brush dirt from his forehead. Kenma’s hair stretches long and handsome beside his open body in the grass.

“Does it hurt?” Hinata asks.

Kenma ghosts a shrug. “Not with you here.”

Hinata breaks off his other antler, to keep his hands occupied.

It falls away into the dirt.

“Here, next,” Kenma murmurs. His fingers tangle in his fine robes.

Hinata nods. “Okay,” he says, and reaches into his empty chest.

He draws out the lungs and sinks his teeth into them, eating slowly. Savoring the bites of his last supper. The meat is good and fresh. Tender in the mouth, and easy on the way down. He snaps the bones of the femur next, and drinks at the marrow insides. Kenma strokes the top of Hinata’s head; he can reach when its bowed, the number of his love.

Hinata picks at Kenma’s carcass like a carrion bird. How together they can be.

“I am glad I dreamed of you like this,” Hinata tells him a little later, his fingers held to Kenma's skin.

Kenma is glad, too. He can’t speak anymore, but he smiles instead, sweet and lovely. Hinata puts his thumbs to the bony rims of his eyes, watching his lashes flutter as he ladles them right out of his skull like diamonds. Hinata draws his hands away, and leaves them rolling gently together in the grass. Then he bends low to scoop up the pink of Kenma’s heart. The muscle is oblong and pearl smooth and fits so easy to his hands, warm to the touch. He feels the heat of it against his cheek—thinking of how they saved the best cuts of meat for each other—as his mouth opens with two lips made to kiss, and he swallows Kenma’s

**Author's Note:**

> [moodboard](https://www.pinterest.com/cylicals/many-eyed-angel/)
> 
> (yes the final verse loops back to the first)
> 
> i have been dabbling in dark fantasy and a bit of horror in my original work lately, and wanted to break in the new username with something creepy LOL (☉_☉)
> 
> as always, thank you to [elo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatal) for the mutual mind-picking that was done. and thank you all so much for reading!


End file.
